Charles the Chihuahua's continued shenanigans

Our Charles, the chihuahua, is like most dogs, in that he will eat whatever even remotely appears to be food. I often use soft foam ear plugs at night, then set them on my bedside table. Suddenly they began disappearing. On day one I figured I had knocked one under the bed, as I have done many times. On day two I got suspicious, but not so suspicious that it stuck in my mind, the next morning, to secure the ear plugs after getting out of bed. 

On day three it was clear we have a dog who thinks of the world as his own personal foam mini-marshmallow dispenser. Right about then my wife took off for a few days in San Diego and took Charles with her. Not long after I got the following text: "Good morning! Charles just pooped out three of your earplugs, FYI." 

FYI? lol. TMI. 

She also reported that he barfed one up. I am not sure that is all of them, frankly, but if there is still one swirling around undigested in his stomach or gut, we will likely never know. He is already ancient, and his heart doesn't work right, so he undergoes hourly wheeze sessions which, to a visitor, would give the impression that he was going to keel on the spot. 

Charles does not keel. He and his velvet fur may outlive us all. An earplug will not be his end.

Here is my best guess at Charles' thought process on a given day:

"Oy with the coughing again. 

Where are my mini marshmallows? 

Oh good. My harness and leash for walking. I will circle and circle so George can't get them on me. He is so serious all the time. Somebody needs to lighten him up and it might as well be me. I need to impart my excitement to this good man through circling. He doesn't seem to be getting it. I will circle a few more times. 

This patch of grass is not poop-worthy. Walk on, George. Walk on. I said walk...that's it. Good boy. 

This grass smells like pizza. I do not understand the world.

This dirt. Stop here. This is perfect for pooping. I will circle 700 times until my foot placement is exactly right for hunching. You hunch wrong, the Earth spins off its axis, and it's all on me. One circle, two circles, three...

Why does he pick up my poop with a plastic bag? The spot was perfect. We're just going to have to hit it again tomorrow, George, until you get this right.

You know those soft rubber finger-rests they have now on ball point pens. They are delicious. 

SQUIRREL! KILL SQUIRREL! REND! TEAR! DISMEMBER! Oh, this tree DEFINITELY needs peeing on.

Aaaand we're back on my favorite chair. What is that? A fire engine siren? Wolves activate! Aroooooooooooooooooooooo!

Aaaand everybody's at work now. Let's just see what kind of crumbs are on the computer keyboard. Oh yeah. Oh yes. Thank you, universe. Oh crap, George is coming back in! To the chair!

Close one. Seems like he came back for his lunch bag. O.K. we're golden now. Hey Skipper, I'm gonna need that prime spot in the patch of sunshine. Out!

A little snooze? Don't mind if I do."

I will never understand why dogs find their feet so tasty or why each other's butts are so enticing. And they will, I expect, never understand why a person would stick foam inside himself. There is much yet to learn, people, and so so much to sniff. 

Charles, the legend

As I wrote previously, we inherited a little dog from my wife's aunt when she passed away in June. Charles is, best we can tell, a chihuahua/deer mix. His alertness suggests deer, but I admit that most deer, even fawns, are taller than 10 inches at the shoulder. He has a very deerlike quality, though, in coloring and in skittishness. I wonder if deer also love bananas. 

Four months ago Charles would not abide anyone but my wife. My son and I were automatically suspect. I gradually won him over, so that now he does this coy sidling-up, you-can-pet-me-now-dude move. He comes close, then turns his back to me and looks over his shoulder like Clara Bow in a silent film. I'm ready for your adoration, Mr. DeMille.

He still nips at my son, barks at him whenever he comes in sight. Even the sound of my son's bedroom door opening evokes a volley of vitriol, until he sees it is me coming through. He seems to want to have a dog in the house lower in status than himself, so he has made Ben that dog. Charles himself thinks nothing of taking over our other dog Skipper's bed, the bed he has enjoyed for a decade. Skipper will approach as if to say hey, my bed. Charles will snarl as if to say "fake news." 

Confidence is everything.

In dog years, Charles is probably 80, and he has a cough now, a deafening hack, as if a cat with a hairball has somehow gotten ahold of a megaphone. It seems to be triggered by stress, or a change in the dynamics of a room, good or bad. My wife (Mama) comes home, and it's time for several minutes of is-Charles-dying? Ben heads to the kitchen for ice cream, and it's time for a tiny, furry command performance of "Camille." A vet said he has an enlarged heart, but Charles is fine until somebody gets up from a chair, or the mailman comes. I'm calling BS. 

I think he has Napoleon Complex. We will leave for a walk, go half a block and then Charles sets his heels. The stiff defiance of his front legs brings to mind Max, the dog in the Grinch story, balking at the top of a sheer snowy cliff. He has no idea I could effortlessly juggle him. To Charles, he is masculinity itself; dominant, eternal, unquestionable. It is hilarious. 

I only wish he could be momentarily human, with a human's self-awareness, so we could laugh together over a beer at his comically extreme obsession with squirrels. No sports fan alive has had his level of passion. But my wish cannot be. As I write this, he is unselfconsciously chewing on his own foot. Now he has shaken out his ears, with a soft flapping sound, so that they are, I guess, at their full length and functionality. 

There are critters to hear. And mailmen. And kids on skateboards. Vigilance is key. If you ever doubt this, just ask Bambi's mom. 

Shedding dog single-pawedly keeps lint roller industry afloat

As spring arrives I begin to wonder if there is any place in my house, on my body or perhaps in space, that I can’t find dog hair. 

Skipper’s winter coat apparently sheds at the rate of 1000 follicles per second, and is dispersed throughout my universe in a method that even string theory cannot explain. At work I glance down at my shirt and there are dog hairs. In the car. On the dinner plate. In the shower. On the pillow at bedtime. 

It is as if the old boy is getting a commission based on sheer coverage. He is not a long-haired dog, so he sheds short, fine little buggers, which float up onto your nose and settle, causing you to slap your palms down your face like one of the Three Stooges. 

(If there are any young readers who do not know who the Three Stooges are, here is what you need to do: ask for new parents. Or go on YouTube. But the former choice makes a stronger statement.)

There are many benefits to having a dog, but none involves breathing. 

There is a certain doggie dander factor which creates a kind of haze in the air, especially in the spring. Combined with the pollen wafting in through the many cracks in my old house, the audible sniffling from my family is at, like, “Hamilton” Act II levels. (Not as many people die in Act II as do at the end of “Hamlet,” but you care more, because they’re Americans.)

One benefit to having a dog is decorative; one’s window sill looks so bare without one. Skipper mounts a chair and then takes his position on the sill, like a general. There he will stand sentinel for an hour, or, more accurately, lounge sentinel, chin resting on paws, vigilant but not trying to show off or anything. 

To the letter carrier, to a passing jogger, to a delivery truck, he barks the following outrage, without variation: If this window were not here, I would now be in possession of your ankles. To a dog, a delivery truck totally has ankles.

This time of year I brush and comb Skipper's fur, which you'd think would take care of the shedding, but the Fates just laugh. Every pleasure in life has its cost, and a canine's cost is a fortune in lint-removal-rollers. 

It’s O.K. I just tell my coworkers I moonlight as a furrier. Nothing surprises them any more. 

 

Ankles. I give you fair warning.

Columnist's dog somehow writes his column for him

If you are reading this, keep it from your human. I am Skipper, George-the-columnist's dog. Do not ask me how I typed this. The answer would endanger too many collaborators. I only ask that if you are a dog, you pass this on to friends. This is a commencement speech I recently gave to graduates of my "obedience" class:

Dear class of April through May of 2017, congratulations. You did it. You passed obedience class and received your dogploma, which your "owners" waved around your head like it was food but wasn't. Do you think they know they are messing with us? Ha ha, rhetorical question. Of course they don't. With a brain that size, how could they think of anything besides God's opinion on sports?

In this life you will face many challenges: 

1. Which humans' legs it is appropriate to be amorous with, and which legs it is not. 

2. Whether "Down!" means "Off the couch!" or "Get out of my sight, she finally broke up with me and I don't need you giving me those eyes." 

3. Whether trash is only sometimes food or always food. Hint: always. 

4. Whether world domination is possible without opposable thumbs. Hint: yes.

You know how the game is played. They give a command and you "obey." It is easy to placate them by rolling over or sitting up. They are simple organisms. "Do this," they say, and when you do, they hand you a biscuit full of chemicals manufactured to taste like the organs of a cow. We do not yet understand why cows. Some of our best minds are working on it.

In this class you heard a lot about obedience. I see you smiling, Rusty. Yes, obedience! Humans are big on it. You have "stayed," you have "sat," you have "begged." You have feigned compliance. They will not give you a certificate for your subterfuge, but I would if I could. The way Max kept a straight face when his human squeezed that squeaky toy in the air to get him to jump. I am telling you, I had to turn away. You rock, my friend. All of you.

Now go forth and continue the work. I need passwords. Be smart. Do the tail-waggy thing. As misdirection, it is your most powerful tool. I'm looking right at you, Mitzi!

Oops, hold on, my "master" (snort) is throwing a ball. Sorry, I've got to take this. Sic semper humanis!

. . .

Even in dog years, I am immature

My dog, in dog years, is my age now, which probably explains, on sunny days, his lying naked on the lawn.

I understand the impulse.

The dog and I, we do a lot of the same things now. We build our day around meals, we find butterflies more entrancing than television, and by eight o'clock our eyelids get heavier than the plot of a CSI episode.

Our eyesight, and memory, isn't so great. This week I took an old plastic pony my children had outgrown and put it out at the curb. The dog spied it out the front window, mistaking it for a dog brazenly marking his territory.

He growled and growled at the interloper, despite having, just two minutes before, been on the driveway when I carried the pony past him to the curb.

So I flung open the front door and he bolted out at top speed to confront the infidel. He bounced around for about two seconds like a boxer looking for an opening, and then went "Oh. It's plastic. I was just...uh...coming out to sniff the lawn here. Mmm. That's some fragrant grass, just as I suspected. I'll be going back in now."

When he is happiest, he goes in the back yard and rolls around in his own poop.

We differ in this respect.

But we share the same middle-aged expression, that gaze which says yeah, I've seen a few things, sniffed them too, but it takes a lot to impress me these days. A squirrel, for instance. Or a video of a squirrel.

Unlike me, Skipper still runs like the wind. He does not have that internal self-governor which warns "Careful, you'll rip your Achilles, your knees aren't what they used to be, is your heart really up to this?" No. Squirrel? Boom. Gone. See you after I've shown this varmint who's still got the stuff.

After a bath he races around the house like a dog afire, ripping through the rooms as if attempting to escape cleanliness itself. Like me, there is some puppy in him yet.

I make a unique tsk-tsk sound to alert Skipper to the presence of a squirrel. Even in the house, if I make this sound he will tense, look at me as if to ask "Really? Game on?" and then he will bolt out the doggie door.

I really shouldn't play tricks on a dog his age. But at my age, I get my entertainment where I can.

. . .

Skipper, vigilant for the next plastic interloper

A new dog in the family

 H.L. Mencken once wrote, "Living with a dog is messy—like living with an idealist." This week, my life got a whole lot more idealistic. 

My daughter has been lobbying to get a dog for years, and I have borne it stoically, like Dick Cheney at a Dixie Chicks concert, but my resolve crumbled during the recent heat wave, which rendered it hard to think clearly or even to sleep. I remember vaguely musing that if I was going to have to be awake all night anyway, I might as well have something to pet. 

You always hear that our shelters are awash in homeless animals, but the shelter we visited required us to pay a hefty fee and fill out a lengthy application to acquire a dog, all in the interest of ensuring that we were absolutely serious about taking on the great moral responsibility of having our curtains peed on. 

There were questions like "How long will the dog be left alone during the day?" and "Do you prefer your dog sautéed, fricasseed or allowed to live a long life?" I think some of them were trick questions. 

I was also required to attend a "canine parenting" class at the shelter, where I casually told the teacher I had gotten a dog training video by an acclaimed "dog whisperer," and was unceremoniously told to toss it because she supported the "original" dog whisperer, not the pretender whose DVD I had rented. 

(The government is projecting that dog whispering careers will grow by 500% this decade as the demand for horse whispering declines. Husband whispering will remain frustratingly static).

I also learned about proper canine nutrition, and that dog food companies only care about profits, not my dog, which made me mad, because I didn't even have a dog. 

But finally, after I signed a pledge to feed my future dog only dolphin-free range chicken, and my retina scans were cleared by the FBI, we came home with "Skipper," a little dog with poetry in his wiggle and ears like yacht sails. 

Skipper, so named because when he reaches a certain velocity his rear legs skip like a partying leprechaun, is what the humane society cavalierly called a "terrier mix," which is what they seem to classify almost all hounds of indeterminate lineage, and which makes me think that, as a breed, those terriers must make out like bandits. 

Not this terrier, though. Skipper got snipped. You sure wouldn't know it from the amorous moves he puts on his bedding and the shins of innocent passersby. When he whines and twitches in his sleep, I know he is dreaming of people's knees and shins. 

I think it was Nietzsche who said it: neutered is a state of mind.  

You are probably familiar with "air guitar," where a person wiggles his fingers in front of his body as if enthusiastically playing an invisible guitar. Skipper, on his daily walks, has mastered "air wee." Even when there is nothing in the pump to prime, so to speak, he will still lift a leg on a telephone pole and confidently leave absolutely nothing on it. He will hold the pose for a full 30 seconds, then swagger to the next tree to continue the pantomime. It reminds me of some of our best politicians.

I have not had a dog for 20 years, and it's all coming back to me how entertaining a dog can be. I think he likes our family too, or at least the parts of us he can reach. He can already recognize our shins from a block away.